But to end the Holyhead Road in the mean streets of Holyhead, or by merely tracing Telford’s modern highway, would be to conclude on a very feeble and inadequate note. Fortunately, the “old post road” across Anglesey still remains. It is three miles longer than Telford’s, and is especially interesting because it affords an excellent means of seeing with our own eyes what were the difficulties travellers had to contend with in the days before road reform. The twists and turns, and hills and hollows, remain just as they were, but as the road is still in use as a means of communication between several villages, with one town midway, the surface, it is safe to assume, is in better condition than in old times. It branches off to the right from the modern road, half a mile beyond Menai Bridge, and gives a taste of its quality at the outset, in making straight for a steep hill. Having climbed this, and passed through Braint and Ceint, up and down and to right and left, it climbs the hill of Penmynydd, whose very name is significant. Here the stage-coaches and the mails were accustomed to be overturned, and it was at sight of this portion of the road that some London coachmen, imported to work this stage, threw up their engagement and went home again. Travellers were not so much interested in Penmynydd being the historic place whence sprang the Tydyrs (“Tiddir” in the Welsh pronunciation and “Tudor” in English), as they were concerned in getting over the ground without broken bones; and the horsemen who preceded coach-travelling looked dismayed in each other’s faces at such a wild spot as this; reassured, however, on descending the rough and stony hill by a sight of a gallows that then overhung the roadway. Cheered by this evidence of law and order extending to the uttermost verge of the land, they removed their hands from their pistol holsters and spurred onward with renewed assurance.
Llangefni, beyond Penmynydd, has grown into a town since those times, with a big “Bull” hotel. At GwyndÛ or Glanyrafon, half-way across the Island, an old coachman, not so handy as most of his fellows, failed to steer so neatly as he should between the great stones that in the good old days lay loosely about the road; with the result that the jolt knocked him off his box and he suffered a broken leg. GwyndÛ in those times was a noted inn. It is now, like many another, a farmhouse, and all the historian can glean of its history is found in the fugitive notes of century-old tourists. Thus, a Mr. Hucks, pedestrianising in 1795, says he dined at GwyndÛ inn, and that the hostess, a “fine old lady,” paid him and his companion “the utmost attention, and appeared particularly solicitous; gave us her blessing at our departure, with a thousand admonitions not to lose ourselves,” which of course they did. Rain and storm beset them, and they gladly quitted the “inauspicious island.”
There is little difficulty in losing one’s way on this old road, for when maps fail there is not a soul here who can understand the English tongue. One might talk Hindustani with equal chance of being understood. Welsh is the only language spoken, for the bi-lingual Welshman is left behind when crossing the Menai. Anglesey is the great stronghold of the Welsh language, and in many of its villages it is impossible to find a single person who understands a word of English. Dim saesoneg is the sole reply the traveller is likely to meet with on the road, or if by chance, in some more civilised townlet, he makes himself understood, the broken and grotesque English of the replies he obtains is likely to be quite unintelligible. Even those who can command a little “Saxon” are chary of using it, and not a few of those who gruffly grunt Dim saesoneg do so because they are shy of their attempts at an unfamiliar tongue being laughed at.
The scenery on the high ground near GwyndÛ may be commended to the attention of those who describe Anglesey as flat, dull, and featureless. Here the road, to the backward glance, looks down towards Bodffordd, in a deep hollow, and away across the island into a charmingly wooded valley, with great bosses of granite cropping out here and there, and in the distance the inevitable background to Anglesey scenery, the Snowdonian mountains. The hamlet of Llynfaes, with whitewashed granite cottages, very quaint and homely, and very like Cornwall, is pleasing, and at Trefor there is a stretch of tree-shaded road whose like is not often found. Bodedern only is somewhat commonplace, and even that is transfigured by glimpses of the dark Holyhead Mountain and shining sea unfolded as the road goes downhill to Llanyngenedl, and thence to Valley. When it has crossed Telford’s road at this last place, the old way enters upon quite another kind of scenery; very beautiful in its sort. Hills, it is true, are not wholly left behind, but the prevailing landscape is flat, with wide, wild stretches of gorsy and heathery moor, threaded with salt-water creeks and pools. Holy Island is entered at Four-Mile Bridge, a causeway spanning the tidal channel. Windmills, seen in long perspective across the flats, shrilly piping gulls, salt pools, lichened granite rocks, and the ruins of Druidical cromlechs, make up the sum total of foreground and middle distance; with the sea at Penrhos and Trearddur Bay on the left, and a long line of roofs and chimneys in the background under Holyhead Mountain, standing for Holyhead town.